When it comes to your clothes: what to wear, what to buy, what to let go--how would you like a simple rallying phrase that:

• clarifies your decisions
• prioritizes your values
• leans into your goals and aspirations
• gives it your personal touch

Friends, this magic phrase is your Style Manifesto. In other posts and videos, I have called it an Intention or a Theme. These are all basically words for a consciously-crafted skeleton on which you hang the stuff of your dreams so they take shape.

There is no one way to write a manifesto and you could literally write a whole book or pamphlet outlining yours (see: every modern political candidate ever). But just in case you don't want this project to take over your entire life, here is one simple method for easily crafting one that is flexible and creative and do-able in a matter of minutes.

Materials needed (now it's a craft! Whee!)

• notepad and/or Post-Its (the more colorful, the funner!)
• pen or markers (funner option)
• Optional addition: Notes App on your phone
  

Now, choose 5 words or phrases that represent your voice, your goals, your current life (function, needs), your communication style, and finally: the IT factor that distinguishes your outfits from anyone else's.

If that kind of freeform, limitless thinking is too wildly obtuse of an order, write these five questions down on a piece of paper and answer them with any words that come to mind. As you do this, keep your favorite outfit or top three favorites in your mind. Consider how you feel and what you are expressing when you wear them.

1. What is one outstanding characteristic you already possess and want to continue to grow or encourage?

How does that look in clothes? I choose all my clothes in cheerful, bright colors (red, yellow, navy, and grass green) and look for whimsical, light-hearted details (ruffled hems and bows) and patterns--stripes and polka dots that are always looking on the bright side of life!
 

2. What is a characteristic of a look, an ideal, or in fashion that is something you aspire to?

My word: POLISHED

How does that look in clothes? I love tailored, well-shaped clothes and classic silhouettes in natural materials like cotton, wool, and leather. I like clothes to coordinate seamlessly and intentionally, but not be excessively matchy. I do not like anything that is ripped, unfinished, stained, excessively faded, or shapeless (even if intentionally done and trendy). That said, I am not always as put together as I'd like to be and my hair is often a bit messy. So...it's an aspiration.

3. Instant Recognition: What word is the instantly recognizable inspirational touchstone for every outfit you create?

My phrase:FUNCTIONAL WHIMSY

How does that look in clothes? Comfy, interchangeable, very practical and high quality pieces with fun colors and details that maybe don't look like everyone else, but that feel great to live in and exude my joy and high energy.

4. What word best communicates your current lifestyle?

My word: UNLIMITED

5. What word or phrase best summarizes the overall aesthetic of your signature style?

My phrase: PLAYFUL CHIC

As you can see, I think there is actually a lot of overlap in my phrases and words and most of the pictures I used for one could easily be used for another, but as I thought through each question, I kept seeing my same favorites over and over and these were the characteristics of those items I love to wear that feel so true to me. 

You have your words, now what?

After you come up with your 5 words or phrases, write them down on Post-Its and put them in your closet or wherever you get dressed each day as a reminder and see if the clothes you pick out align with what you wrote. You can also put them in a note on your phone to reference when you are out shopping and before you put that impulse buy in your cart.

If you did this exercise and you don't feel like you got the words quite right, you have infinite opportunities to try again--change out one word or another and tweak it until you get just the right fit! Happy manifesting!

Have you ever researched a car to buy and suddenly start seeing it everywhere? Have you ever been in a noisy crowd of people where nothing seems audible until you hear your own name clear as a bell? This is your brain's Reticular Activating System at work, charged with filtering out the unimportant stuff so you can notice what is important--or what you think is important at the time. Some of these filters are based on survival instinct (food=good!), but others have come about from beliefs you may not even realize you have (always looking for an exit because you have a belief about being trapped, for example). 

Exciting news! You can intentionally program the RAS to seek and find evidence of anything that you want! In the example of the titular game "Looking for Hearts," which I learned about from author/speaker Mel Robbins, one simply decides to look for heart shapes in the world wherever they go and begins to find them--in clouds, in rock formations, in imprints on toast, or in a reflection off the person-near-you's hair.  

When you give your brain a job, it goes to work faithfully for what you have told it is important.

But after a time, maybe your brain notices that hearts aren't actually that big of a deal to you because you can't eat them or they're just not really getting you out of the bed in the morning and that's okay! If you want them to be a priority to you, just leave a reminder to keep looking for them. Keep re-deciding to keep telling your brain they are important.

OR...pick something that actually matters deeply to you, but is not looking the way you want: your romantic partnership, your business's success, your connection with your kids, your home environment. Put your brain on the job of finding the good and beautiful in one of these areas. The more you decide to look for it, the more you will find. The more attention you give it, the more you will create examples of it through your own connectedness and loving attention. 

You create more of what you focus on.

That ALSO means...if you're determined to find evidence of negativity, frustration, disharmony, hostility, resentment, etc, you can do that, too. Does it feel good to you to focus on those things? Probably not. You don't have to convince yourself that you love things you don't love; your mind will not believe this at all! Just slowly, intentionally, consciously: look for the good and hopeful and bright. 

Look for the hearts! They're everywhere. You'll see.

Last fall, I attended a coaching conference in Phoenix, with about 1000 (or more) mostly women. On the first day, the keynote speaker Brooke Castillo, who had two new Chanel purses with her, complete with beautiful boxes, on-stage from the first session, offered them to the large audience for $10. 

$10 for a multi-thousand dollar purse. 

Most of us stayed in our seats, confused, or letting our brains spin with all the reasons our brains offered us of why she did not mean us. 

"I don't have any cash on me." 

"This is a joke." 

"There's a larger lesson here...right?"

 "There are too many people between me and the stage." 

"I can't stand up and just ASK for a purse in front of all these people."

"I don't want to look greedy/materialistic/like I care about purses."

A few, however, stood up--borrowing cash from people in neighbor seats, offering to Venmo, etc. and the very fastest of those got Chanel purses…for $10. The entire gigantic hotel resort ballroom was electrified and staring at the stage in astonishment. Even the online attendees (who were also eligible for the purses) were furiously chatting messages we could see on the wall projector all amounting to: 

What. The Heck. Is Happening Right Now?!

Yes, some people acted faster than others, but at the rate the purses were claimed, there wasn't a single person in the audience who couldn't have claimed a purse if s/he had immediately believed it was available and meant for them. It hit me: I could have had a Chanel purse. For $10. All I had to do was ask (and in this case, claim it).

What opportunities are being presented to you every day that you are convinced are not for you? That you are closed to because of some sentence in your brain telling you that you can't. It's only true if you believe it!

What if everything was available to you--Chanel purses, travel, strong relationships, meaningful work, a beautiful garden, a cold drink on a hot day, a kind word? Decide that it is and let it outlast your doubt until you have it. Want some help figuring out how? Book a free discovery call with your favorite coach! I specialize in helping you tap into your own perfect wisdom to turn desires into decisions that activate and release your power. Let's goo!

I grew up in a small town with a historic movie theater built in the 1920s and the projector there wasn't much newer, meaning that occasionally there would be unintentional intermissions during the show because a light bulb exploded or the film reel was stuck or broken or put in upside down, or in one memorable instance, loaded in the wrong order. I believe this theater now has modern trappings of the digital age, but in the free-wheeling 80s and 90s, going to the movies was its own adventure, never mind the feature!

The first time I saw the greatly anticipated third and final installment in the Back 2 the Future franchise, for example, the reels were loaded into the projector out of order. As the very subject of the movies is time travel, it took us, the confused audience, quite awhile to figure out what was happening. The theater finally offered a complete ordered showing of the movie following the complete disordered mix-up and we all got home very late that evening and thoroughly confused.

But what do the adventures of Marty and Doc have to do with self-help, the semi-cohesive theme of this blog?

We (the audience of the Select Theater in the summer of 1990) thought we were just watching a very confusing movie. "This is just how it is," we thought as we crunched our popcorn. But it wasn't the movie at all; it was the projector that was messed up. At the movies, as in life, we think we're seeing everything playing out in front of us just as it is, but it's really the projector that's running the whole show.

In the movie of our life, the projector is our mind and our thoughts are the lens through which we experience every emotion beamed onto the background of the world. What's really going to bake your noodle is the fact that the majority of craftsmanship of our projector lens is completed by the time we reach the sophisticated and informed age of 7*, honed by our interpretations of inputs we received from our families, our cultures, our backgrounds, and our experiences. The brain mostly operates in theta and alpha frequencies in these early years--the same as in hypnosis or deep meditation.

While your experiences before age 7 could have created a very positive view of money and healthy self-esteem that may be serving you well to this day, that is unfortunately not always the case. So if you saw your parents fighting over money just before they got divorced when you were 5, are you doomed to live a lonely, bankrupt life and have an adversarial relationship with money? Of course not! Though your lens was formed in those early years creating the foundation of your subconscious mind, you can make changes to it anytime you want to. In many cases, life does this for us as a new experience challenges an old belief that makes the old one less useful. 

But you can be the cause of changes, too--not just the effect. You can wipe down the lens. You can get a totally brand new one! You can buff out a scratch. You can swat the fly that keeps landing on it. The only trick is, you have to do this intentionally if you want to create an intentional result. The way you create intention is with your thoughts. And the shortcut to creating and believing the thoughts that you want is with a life coach.

And scene.

Are you are ready to change the movie on the screen, uplevel your life, and give your poor, painful, doomed thoughts the heave ho?! Let's work together and let's go! It would be an honor to be your coach! Click to go to my appointments page to schedule your free 20 minute consult call.

You may have heard of a handwriting analysis as a means to learn about your existing personality traits, but have you ever considered that your handwriting may also be a powerful tool for leaning into your future and transforming who you could become?

Alphabetician and psychologist Vimala Rodgers developed The Vimala Alphabet as a tool for fostering personal growth through the adoption of letter forms that she believes represent our noblest selves. Because our writing represents the way we think, Rodgers believes it must also be true that intentionally changing our writing to represent higher ideals and balanced energy will therefore transform the way we think. 

A graphologist, examines and analyzes existing handwriting to compile a list of personality traits of the writer. An alphabetician deals with the alphabet in some way. In the case of Rodgers, a pioneer in the field of hand-brain interconnectedness, she uses the intentional adoption of certain alphabetical forms as a means for teaching people to bring out the traits those letters represent in themselves.

Rodgers' "Vimala alphabet"

Regarding the letter T, for example, Rodgers has this to say: “In school most of us were taught to cross the stem midway down, which represents mediocrity, or ‘just be like everyone else and above all, don’t step out of that box!' Placing a vigorously drawn crossbar on top of the t stem releases blockages that have prevented your inner vision from coming to life.”

My first attempt at Vimala writing with Ts crossed on top!

In her book Your Handwriting Can Change Your Life, offers various insights on how the free-flowing cursive of her alphabet is in direct opposition to learned emotional imbalance. For example, printing instead of writing creates a fence that separates the letters from one another. People who block print (print in only uppercase letters), the majority of which are men, have turned that fence into a wall, to protect and hide talents that they may be afraid to express.

Rodgers' book contains many exercises for personal transformation through handwriting to reach a particular goal in life, but offers this one as a starting point:

• For 40 consecutive days, practice writing the initial of your first, full birth name (not nickname, even if you go by it) in upper and lower case, and words containing it, using the Vimala alphabet shown above
  
• Do the same with the first letter of your last name (at birth)
• Write for at least 15 minutes per day
  
• Write on UNlined paper to keep away from "in the box" and "safe" thinking
  
• Write in pen, which is indelible and declarative! 
• Do not skip a day
   
  
  
  

Want to explore more with Vimala handwriting? Susan Govorko, graduate of the Vimala Rodgers Institute and author of the Vimala alphabet guidebook Alphabet, Pen, and Ink, offers prompts for 40 days of journaling for personal growth through her web site of the same name:  Handwriting for Personal Growth at Alphabet, Pen, and Ink. Govorko also created this handout for referencing the Vimala letters.

If you are seeking personal transformation of any kind, but feel confused, blocked, stuck, or unsure where to begin, it would be my honor to work with you as your coach to help you help yourself!  I offer group courses, virtual organizing, feng shui consultations, and personalized coaching on your timeline to meet your needs. Visit the contact page of my site to book a session or send me a message to set up a discovery call.

Let's create a powerful magnet to attract more love and abundance to your life, layering one beautiful intention on top of another in physical form.

The intention is what matters, but by making that intention into something you can experience with your senses, you are reminded of it constantly, subconsciously, which is how you--all of us--operate about 95% of the time. Our habits and practiced beliefs run the show and give our prefrontal cortex time to rest or work on others things we're undecided on. 

This is not different from keeping your gym equipment where you can see and access it readily if you have an intention to work out more. In this case, you're preparing your environment for love and abundance and telling your mind to get to work creating more evidence for it with repetitions. Lift more weights at the gym, get stronger. Live in the frequency of love more, become more loving and attract more love. 

With this magnet, you're stating that you believe it exists and that it's available to you and we always get more of what we expect!

So are you ready to prepare your environment for more love and tell the universe you know it exists for you?! Let's do it!

Ingredients you'll need to make the love magnet:

• a clean (no labels!), clear jar of any size (the jar you select will determine the amounts you need of each of the other ingredients)
• salt for grounding and purifying your space (I'm using pink salt because pink is romantic! and i have it on hand, but you can use any kind)
  
• dried orange peel calls in health, cheer, and joy
• rosemary, a purifier, calls in clarity and prosperity and is great for fresh starts
• a red rose, pointing outward, calls in love and passion